SANDRACING REPORT 04/06/2011

It was reigning & 4 times winner Mitch Godden who once again took the honours of becoming 2011 Condor Sand Ace, taking the maximum 4 wins from the heats which make up the finalists for both the A & B finals before dominating the A Final. His main rival & the only other rider to win this title was local Anthony Queripel who rode hard but could not reach the speeds that Mitch was obtaining whilst at the same time fending off a regular English competitor on our sands Dan Winterton who was only able to finish racing after his bike had expired when Anthony Bougourd loaned him his bike after having to retire with a leg injury after getting hit buy one of the course marker cones. The other 6 riders in this final made this the most exciting racing on the beach this year. The B final with 5 locals & 1 Englishman on paper should have gone to club president Bill Cohu as the most experienced rider out there but was outdone by a very talented Gareth Winterburn who was riding on sand & on a slider for the very first time being more use to riding a sidecar outfit.

Though the juniors were riding normal championship races there was an added bonus of awards at this meeting which were given to all the riders. Thought Billy-Reece Rive took 4 wins from the 5 races it was his twin brother Ricky-Lee who took top place as Billy-Reece once again was unfortunate not to finish the first race & the competition between the brothers was the closest all season. Josh Lambourne & Jarod Carrington were both in contention for the 3^rd place spot but an improving Alain Branquet managed to get this position in the final race whilst Billy Russell had a more off form day being down in 6^th place for most of the meeting.

The 2 little cadets also went home with their first awards of the season but it was Barnaby Queripel on the70cc Honda who took all 4 wins from Daniel Clark’s 50cc Honda, a change of gearing on this bike did not seemed to have worked as he was slower then normal.

There were only 5 racing cars for this meeting but it wasn’t the Ozzyworth that was missing, having sourced another Prelude engine from under a work bench Mark Ozanne had got it fitted in time but a broken gear selector stopped his racing from race 2 thus allowing the smaller grass track cars the field to themselves but it was only Ian Robert who placed in all 5 races as his rivals Simon Carre, Jean-Paul Kennedy & Stephen Oliviera all had problems which meant they missed some races. Saloons again only numbered 4 but Faye Downs & Karl West were joined this meeting by Darren De Carteret in an automatic Honda Civic 1500cc & the brother & sister pairing of Ricky & Vienna Le Cheminant in the ex Bill Cohu Honda CRX now painted bright red, hopefully by next meeting they will have a car apiece to race.

Paul Stanford